The mobile Internet protocol version 6 (MIPv6) allows a mobile device to maintain a continuous connection with another device (referred to as a “corresponding node”) that supports Internet protocol version 6. Two separate modes of communication are supported with MIPv6: bi-directional tunneling (BT) mode and route optimization (RO) mode. Mobile IPv6 utilizes a home agent node to manage the forwarding of data traffic to a mobile node when that mobile node is not present in a home network.
When a mobile node moves to a foreign network, the mobile node registers in that network and reports the registration back to the home agent node. The home agent node receives data traffic from the corresponding node and forwards the traffic to the mobile node in the foreign network using IP in IP tunneling in BT mode. In RO mode the home agent facilitates the communication between the corresponding node and the mobile node such that the corresponding node is notified of the new location and the address of the mobile node in the foreign network allowing the corresponding node to directly communicate with the mobile node in the foreign network without interruption to the transmission control protocol (TCP) connection between the mobile node and the corresponding node.
Variations of mobile IPv6 enable mobility within particular domains which is referred to as local or micro mobility and mobility between domains is referred to as global mobility. Some of these variations of the mobile IPv6 standard include fast MIP (FMIP), hierarchical MIP (HMIP) and regional MIP (RMIP). Each of these technologies include significant overhead in signaling that diminishes their efficiency.